I have placed all the 'positive' high emotion actions and events under the heading of Suppression because although the emotion is high the effects are 'calming'.

The negative high emotion events and actions are placed here in the Overload section because when this sort of emotion is high the effects are anything but calming - they overload the system.

You will be able to see that we can voluntarily provoke very high levels of apparently negative Emotion [Actions]. Riding on a roller coaster, for example, is apparently negative because it is designed to provoke fear. But because these acts are voluntary, the effects are only temporary - a temporary overload of the system. Subconsciously too they are maybe not as potentially damaging because in our hearts we know they are short lived and we chose to do them, even if they may even be a little dangerous.

But some extreme emotion may be involuntary and may even be prolonged in its effect. And this high emotion can produce truly intense spiritual experiences.

This section thus does two things:

It provides a catch all section which enables me to record spiritual experiences which cannot be attributed to any of the other more specific sections

It enables me to describe in a general way how all high emotion works to give you an experience

Background

All the following Events might be classified as being ones which generate largely negative extreme emotion, often fear, sometimes grief, also pain - the list is not exhaustive but illustrative

To this list of Events can be added a huge number of Illnesses and diseases, which produce Extreme pain and thus very high emotion. Also classified as Illnesses and diseases are a number which might in reality be better classed as events of high emotion, for example:

How it works

The Model is a model of our Minds showing the functions that are key to spiritual experience. It is divided into three – the Subconscious, the Conscious and the Higher spirit :

The Higher spiritgives us access to the spiritual world, the specific function that creates spiritual input – dreams visions etc is called the composer;

Our Conscious mind is the mind of the intellect – reason, memory, and will. It is often described as the ‘masculine’ in us and loosely speaking is processed by our left brain;

Our Subconscious mind is the mind of emotion and feeling, creativity and imagination, as well as perception. It is also the processor of sensory information and nervous system messages. It is the receiver of information from our autonomic systems including the sexual system. It is often described as the ‘feminine’ in us and loosely speaking is processed by our right brain;

The only route to our composer is via the Subconscious – the feminine side.

The only way we can activate the subconscious is to Squash the Intellect - aspects of our Conscious self.

All spiritual experience works by squashing the 'masculine' Conscious self and letting the 'feminine' Subconscious self take over.

Look again at the Model

All spiritual experience works by overloading or suppressing the functions that produce inputs to the Will. A function is what we were doing at the time, if the experience was involuntary, or what we need to be doing if we deliberately want to have a spiritual experience.

In effect spiritual experience works by the overload [or suppression] of one or more of the following functions [blue boxes, follow the arrows backwards]

The nervous system

The 5 senses system

The autonomic system – especially our sexual systems

The system of Emotion

Reasoning

Memory recall

Learning - in an indirect temporary way, via Memory

Objective setting - a function of the will

And this is how all spiritual experience works, all the activities I have described on the website overload or suppress one or more of these functions on a temporary, semi-permanent or permanent basis.

Emotion thus has a hugely important effect. It also has an interesting effect in that if we experience any form of very high Emotion it has a tendency to squash the functions of reasoning anyway, adding to the overall effects.